EU referendum: PM’s immigration promise ‘deluded’

Kate Proctor, Westminster Correspondent

Yorkshire MP Andrew Percy is among a number of Conservative politicians extremely unimpressed with David Cameron’s EU deal, insisting it does nothing to protect Britain’s borders.

The representative for Brigg and Goole described Mr Cameron’s efforts to negotiate a new set of terms for Britain’s membership as a ‘bad deal’ for those living in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.

He took aim at the Prime Minister’s claim he’s made the country less attractive to immigrants and ended a culture of getting ‘something for nothing’.

Mr Cameron said last night: “We have also secured a breakthrough agreement for Britain to reduce the unnatural draw that our benefits system exerts across Europe.”

If Britain votes to remain in the EU at a referendum this summer, the country will be able to apply a seven-year emergency brake on in-work benefits for EU migrant workers, as well as cuts in child benefit for their children living overseas - applicable immediately for new arrivals and from 2020 for the 34,000 existing claimants.

However Mr Percy is clearly at odds with the Prime Minister and believes immigration will rise.

He wrote on social media this morning: “This is a bad deal for Yorkshire and Lincolnshire that does nothing to protect our borders or our benefit system. Quite the reverse.

“We have no agreement on an emergency brake on benefits, that is now in the gift of EU commission and other members. We’d have to beg for it.

“We remain inside a fully open Europe on which hundreds of millions of EU citizens have an automatic right to settle in Uk and get benefits.

“Again let’s be clear, there is no ‘special status’ for UK, we remain subjected to supremacy or EU laws do ECJ can unpick the deal we have.